


The Broken and the Breaking

by INMH



Series: after the evacuation (pacifist ending) [34]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Drama, Enemies to Friends, Friendship, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Strong Language, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 16:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16814068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Gavin and RK900 go through hell together.





	1. Chapter 1

It was supposed to be their day off.  
  
Hence why Hank’s phone was off.  
  
Hence why Connor had to be the one to tell him.  
  
“Hank,” Connor said from somewhere behind him, “I’ve just gotten off a call with Captain Fowler.”  
  
Hank’s eyes rolled shut. Calls from Jeff Fowler on a day off meant that some sort of shit was going down, and he just really didn’t _need_ that today. He dragged his gaze away from the game on the TV. “Right. And what did Fowler… Say?” Hank’s sentence dragged to a close when he saw the look on Connor’s face, saw his LED flickering between red and yellow.  
  
“Detective Reed and RK900 are missing.”  
  
Hank felt a damnable mixture of energy and dread. “Damn it.”  
  
“We have to-”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”  
  
Hank had not been prepared for work today. Today had been a day for physically and mentally lazing around on the couch and forgetting about anything work-related. His mind was slow and ineffective as he turned the possibilities over in his mind: Gavin and RK900 being missing was bad, primarily because an android of RK900’s abilities and strength being victim of a crime implied skill- one did not easily overpower an android, particularly one built like RK900 was. The guy was literally _made_ for police-work, and sometimes police-work included hardcore scrapping with suspects. And if someone had taken them, the purposes could only be nefarious- they must have some knowledge their captors wanted, or they were hoping to extort the police department.  
  
(Or they could both be dead, brains blown out and bleeding sluggishly into a ditch somewhere.  
  
But Hank didn’t like to think about those kinds of possibilities until he had to.)  
  
Connor was waiting, bouncing a little restlessly in the living room. His relationship with RK900 was- to put it _very_ lightly- strained, but Hank suspected that while he didn’t like RK900 any more than Hank liked Gavin, he still didn’t dislike him so much that he wanted him dead in a ditch somewhere. It was almost a sort of familial obligation: ‘I might hate your guts, and occasionally I want to push you off a tall building, but I’m morally obligated to not let anyone else kill you.’  
  
“Ready?” Connor asked when he saw Hank.  
  
“Just a minute.” Hank turned and knocked on the door to Connor’s room. After a moment the door cracked open and Christopher, the only other RK800 android known to still be alive, appeared in the crack. “Hey, Chris?”  
  
Christopher warily poked his head out of the bedroom. “Yes?”  
  
Geez. Hank would take him over RK900 any day, but the poor kid was a bundle of nerves that flinched at every loud sound or sudden movement. Since they’d taken him in a couple weeks before, Christopher had barely left the house. Christ, he’d barely left his and Connor’s _room._ In that time he’d communed with Sumo and developed a bizarrely accurate understanding of Hank’s dog, anticipating with eerie accuracy precisely when Sumo would come begging for a walk, or what the pitch of his growl meant.  
  
There was probably a more scientifically accurate explanation than ‘the android is talking to my fucking dog’, but Hank thought that sounded more poetic.  
  
“We got an emergency at work,” Hank continued, “So Connor and I gotta go in. We’re not sure how long we’ll be gone, so-”  
  
“I’ll be sure to walk and feed Sumo,” Christopher supplied.  
  
“Thanks, man. You need anything, just give us a call.”  
  
“Will do.” Hank stepped away, and the door slipped shut again. He followed Connor wordlessly out to the car, pausing only to scratch Sumo’s head on the way out. “You drive,” He said. “I assume you have the exact coordinates.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Once they’d pulled out of the driveway, Hank settled back into his seat and sighed. “Alright, so what details do we have right now? Any?”  
  
“There was a facility busted right before the evacuation back in November,” Connor explained. “It functioned as a sort of torture-house for androids, comparable to the Eden Club with violence as the service. The police raided it to apprehend the androids in accordance with President Warren’s order to seize and destroy all androids, but the proprietors managed to escape. Evidently RK900 and Gavin were being sent to investigate some suspicious activity in proximity of the building.”  
  
Hank frowned. “And?”  
  
Connor took his eyes off the road and eyed him briefly. “And apparently they’ve gone missing. RK900 sent a brief distress message to the DPD before his tracker went offline.” Right; as a non-deviant android, RK900 still had an active tracker the DPD could use to locate him. “There are a few patrol officers down at the building where they were last known to be; they’re waiting for us to get there and take another look at the scene.”  
  
“Have they found anything?”  
  
Connor was quiet.  
  
“Connor?”  
  
The android kept his eyes on the road.  
  
“Blood. Blue blood.”  
  
[---]  
  
It looked like any other crime-scene.  
  
The immediate street outside of the building’s entrance was taped off, and there were cops milling around. Not a great deal of onlookers, though this didn’t seem to be an area with a lot of residents or regular passers-by: It was rough, a part of Detroit that had yet to be restored by the city fathers. Hank was chilled and a bit disturbed to recognize Gavin’s car parked alongside the building: The forensics team was going over it now, looking for fingerprints and hair. The trunk was open and Hank didn’t see any body-bags, which was a good sign.  
  
“Hey Hank, Connor,” Ben Collins greeted them as they got out of the car and approached the tape. “Betcha didn’t think it’d be Reed and- his android buddy dragging you out on your day off, huh?” He’d stumbled for a moment, and Hank suspected that Ben had meant to refer to RK900 by his surname- right up until he remembered that RK900 was a dedicated Cyberlife ass-kisser who didn’t believe that androids were human and therefore did not require a last name.  
  
“It wasn’t on the top of my list for the day,” Hank admitted. “What’ve we got, Ben? Apparently you found some blue blood?”  
  
“We did,” Ben said grimly, motioning for them to follow him. “Big splatter of it, right on the floor in here. No human blood- and we’ve had enough time to find any if it was here. Can’t speak for anyone else here, but personally I was worried that maybe Gavin had finally lost his temper and shot RK900.” He chuckled uneasily. “You know how he is. But they’re both missing, and Gavin’s car’s still here; he’s pretty fit, but if he was gonna move an android of RK900’s weight and size he would need more than just his raw power if he was gonna get really far.”  
  
They stepped into the building. It looked like a standard auto-mechanic’s workshop, with the appropriate machinery and rigging necessary to work with cars. It must have shut down a while ago, because some of said machinery and remaining tools spoke to Hank of a time when cars were much less high-tech. Grass was growing in cracks on the floor where some sunlight had gotten in, and there was dirt and trash and debris strewn around in corners. Not the most conspicuous place in the world, which- if Hank were that sort of person- he would value if he was planning on setting up an illegal torture-house for stolen androids.  
  
“He sent a distress message,” Connor said. “What did it say?”  
  
“Uh…” Ben tapped his tablet for a moment, frowning until he found a copy of the message in question. “It says, ‘ALERT’ and the coordinates for this building- I assume he was interrupted mid-message.”  
  
“There must have been a significant threat,” Connor reasoned, eyes jumping around the room as they stepped further in. “If he thought he couldn’t deal with it. Multiple attackers, all armed.”  
  
“We know at least one of them was.” Ben led them to the side of the room, near to an open doorway that led into a stairwell. On the floor, signaled by an evidence marker, was exactly what Ben had promised: A big splatter of blue blood. “It was darker earlier,” Ben remarked.  
  
“Thirium progressively evaporates when exposed to air for too long,” Connor murmured, staring fixedly at the splatter.  
  
“If it’s still visible, how long do you think it’s been since he was shot?” Hank asked.  
  
Connor was quiet for a moment, probably doing some calculations. “It depends,” He said, “On the saturation. It seems that RK900 was shot and laid still for a moment or two before moving- or being moved. The saturation of blood is higher here.” His eyes flicked around to the surrounding floor. “I can detect traces of smaller droplets nearby that have evaporated completely indicating that he might have been jerked upwards and pulled away by someone. The level of saturation in _this_ spot suggests that RK900 would have been shot about four hours ago.”  
  
“And if I had to take a stab in the dark, I’d wager it was right in the middle of him typing out that SOS message,” Hank wagered. “Probably started it anticipating there was about to be a scrap, and didn’t have a chance to finish it.”  
  
“My thoughts exactly.”  
  
Ben nodded to them. “Take a look around,” he said, “Get a lay of the land, come get me if you find anything.”  
  
“Will do.”  
  
Hank and Connor parted, pacing around the warehouse; Hank went for that stairwell first. “What’s down there?” He asked the officer standing near the door.  
  
“That leads down to the rooms where they used to torture the androids.” She made a face. “It really does look like a torture-chamber down there: The walls are soundproof, and there’s equipment in one of the rooms that we’re pretty sure tampers with the wifi connections androids use. And the _tools_ -” She shuddered. “It’s pretty bad.”  
  
“I take it they’ve combed those rooms for evidence already?”  
  
She nodded. “Yeah. No dice.”  
  
Hank nodded. “I figured.”  
  
Next, he walked into the garage. It was a separate addition with a door leading to it from the warehouse, likely where the workers would have parked the cars they weren’t working on. There was a trapdoor built into the center of the floor. “That part of the garage?” He called to Ben, standing nearby and speaking with two other cops.  
  
“We think the torture-guys built it,” He explained. “Y’know, a backdoor if they ever had to escape in a pinch.”  
  
_Probably what they used to get out the night the army apprehended the androids,_ Hank thought. It was dim, but he could hear people’s voice echoing from the passage below: Officers gathering evidence. He saw the beam from one of their flashlights gleam briefly in the darkness.  
  
“Hank.” He turned around, saw Connor standing behind him. His face was impassive, but Hank sensed there was more distress to him than he let on- Connor was calmer when he had a puzzle to solve, even when the stakes were high. “I think I might know what happened.”  
  
Hank straightened up. “Yeah?”  
  
Connor moved to the doorway to the warehouse, and Hank followed. “They came in together,” Connor said, nodding to the street-side doorway they’d come in through, “But they split up once they were in. Gavin went to the desk-” He pointed to the desk next to the stairwell that led to the torture rooms, “-and RK900 went in there to check the trapdoor.” He pointed back to the trapdoor Hank had been examining.  
  
“And you know this because…?”  
  
“It was raining when they came here. They stepped in the mud and grass outside, and I can still see traces of the footprints. Gavin’s were harder to follow, what with the amount of foot-traffic this building has seen, but RK900 wears the same kind of shoe that I do.” He nodded back to the trapdoor. “RK900 must have been checking the trapdoor for recent use, because the footsteps lead up to it and nowhere else in the room. The tracks _leaving_ the room indicate that he was running.”  
  
“Like maybe someone went after Gavin.”  
  
“I can’t think of any other reason why he’d run.” Connor gestured to the desk. “I can only assume that someone came either through the main door, or opened the one beside the desk unexpectedly and went for Gavin. RK900 came running, likely saw the number of assailants- or some other aspect of the scene that made him feel unduly threatened- and right there…” He looked down at the dark splatter on the ground, LED cycling yellow. “…They shot him.”  
  
“But not killed him,” Hank said, “Or they’d have just left him here, wouldn’t they?”  
  
Connor didn’t look too optimistic. “We don’t necessarily bleed as much as humans do- but the amount of blood we have is finite, which makes it more serious. It depends on where we’ve been shot and what sort of damage has been done, and I can’t necessarily determine that from what I have here. They could have killed him and dumped the body somewhere else.”  
  
Damn. Hank hadn’t thought of that.  
  
“Any human blood that you can see? Anything forensics might have missed?”  
  
“Not that I can see. It’s possible they incapacitated Gavin without spilling blood and shot RK900 in a panic, or maybe because they thought he’d be easier to subdue when injured.”  
  
Hank pointed to the deteriorating splatter of Thirium. “Any blood trail from there you can follow?”  
  
Connor made a face. “No- Whoever did it must have anticipated that there would be a blood-trail to be followed.”  
  
Hank raised an eyebrow at him. “So, like, someone who’s accustomed to cleaning up android blood? Someone who maybe has experience running a torture-brothel for people who like to slice up androids for fun?”  
  
Connor nodded gravely. “That would fit the bill.”  
  
“Shame they’re not here to offer up their tactics.”  
  
“No…” Connor bit his lip looking at the floor as he thought, but then met Hank’s eyes. “But I know someone who might have some perspective on the subject.”  
  
[---]  
  
“I’d like to reiterate that you don’t have to do this.”  
  
Annabelle gave a weak smile, tugging at the hair that covered her eye. Hank hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but it was obvious when viewed from the right angle that the right-half of Annabelle’s face was badly damaged; she used her hair to conceal it, and it worked well enough if one didn’t pay too much attention. “This is important,” She said. “I can do it.”  
  
“Likewise,” The WG100, Bryson, agreed.  
  
The WR600, a russet-haired male named George, was more hesitant. After a moment, he gave a little nod. “Yeah. Whatever. I can talk.”  
  
“We can stop whenever you need,” Connor assured.  
  
“Let’s just get it over with.”  
  
Annabelle turned to the other WR600 in the room, one who’d been lingering on the edge: A blond with a nasty scar on the left side of his face. Hank had met him a few times, once when he and Annabelle had been attacked in their house- _this_ house, a rundown squat that they’d claimed as their own- and this was probably the calmest and most normal he’d ever seen the guy; he could be a bit, uh… _Squirrelly_ sometimes. “Ralph,” Annabelle said, “Could you… Could you step outside?”  
  
Ralph frowned, LED going yellow. “Ralph- _I_ \- Why do you want me to go?” He asked, a little sadly.  
  
“I-” Annabelle’s mouth twisted painfully. “I don’t want you to have to hear it. I don’t want it in your head if it doesn’t have to be.”  
  
Ralph clearly disagreed with that, if his expression and LED were anything to go by. But then, without protest, he stepped out of the living room and into the kitchen. Hank heard a door open and shut, and Annabelle nodded.  
  
“Alright, we can start.”  
  
The three androids were seated on a couch that had seen better days. Hank and Connor were seated on two chairs across from them.  
  
“Tell us about the Hostel.”  
  
Annabelle took the lead. “It was modeled after the horror movie. In the movie it’s a sort of exclusive club where the super-rich can pay to torture and murder innocent people. The replica functioned as… Sort of as an equivalent of the Eden Club, with torture as the primary draw.”  
  
“But not murder?” Hank noted.  
  
“Generally not,” Annabelle said. “Before the revolution stealing androids could be difficult, and legally risky. The Hostel didn’t like replacing androids if they could help it.”  
  
“There were rules,” Bryson piped up. “Rules about what you could and couldn’t do to the android you were with. The owners would come in and stop them sometimes if it looked like we were fatally injured.”  
  
“And then they’d repair you?” Connor asked.  
  
“Yes. It was a regular thing after a session.” Annabelle was fiddling with her hair again. “Eventually it becomes harder to hide, though. The skin doesn’t come back as easily, and your casing starts to show. Some fixes were enough to leave you functional, but maybe not as functional as you could be.”  
  
“And when you say torture, you mean the conventional kind? Or something else?” Hank didn’t know if maybe there was some unique ways to torture an android as opposed to a human.  
  
George gave a rough laugh. “Anything you can think of, so long as it didn’t break their precious-fucking-rules: There were blowtorches, saws, needles, twisting and grabbing and breaking-” He broke off, voice cracking, and Annabelle rubbed a hand up and down his back.  
  
“If you were able to feel pain,” Connor said slowly, “in spite of your injuries, can I conclude that the owners tampered with your nervous systems?”  
“They did,” Bryson confirmed. “Any android that got brought in, they’d hack you and disable your ability to shut down or temporarily disable your nerves after being injured. They did their best to make sure that we had a pain sensitivity comparable to a human’s, and that we couldn’t just turn it off when we’d had enough.”  
  
_Sick,_ Hank thought, trying his damndest to keep a straight face. _That’s so fucking sick._ He remembered the damn Hostel movies; original concept for a horror series at the time, sure, but torture porn had never been his thing and it sickened him to think that real people had endured something similar in real life.  
  
“They were operating out of an old building, not too far from where Jericho’s headquarters is today,” Connor continued. “Evidently the owner of the property wasn’t aware of what it was being used for until he got a call from the DPD when the Hostel was shut down. Can you tell us about the general layout of the place, from your experience with it? Anything unusual that sticks out to you, something that might be of use to us now?”  
  
“God,” Annabelle shook her head. “Hallways. Lots of hallways. I don’t know what that place was designed to be, but it was a clusterfuck of hallways and rooms- Or at least, that’s what I remember. They didn’t take us out of the cells too often, really only for repairs, and when I escaped I was only paying attention to what I remembered would get me outside.” She gave a weak shrug. “I could be misremembering. I was panicked. But it felt like there were a lot of hallways and rooms.”  
  
“Do any of you know if maybe there was another location, or if this was the only Hostel in Detroit?”  
  
The three androids looked contemplative, and Hank saw them exchange glances, confirming with one another. “No,” George said. “Not that I know of.”  
  
“Me neither.”  
  
“Haven’t the faintest.”  
  
“Damn it,” Hank whispered.  
  
George made a little sound, something like a sigh that had a weird whirring-edge to it. Hank assumed it was a sign of distress. “I don’t know if it’ll make you feel better or worse,” He muttered, “But chances are your coworkers have been taken to whatever new setup these fuckers have going. They’re… _Probably_ not dead.” He grimaced painfully. “But they’re probably wishing they were.”  
  
That was comforting.  
  
[---]  
  
Hank needed a break.  
  
They stopped by the Chicken Feed. It was raining now, much as it had been the day he’d first come here with Connor, and this time Hank didn’t bother getting a table. He brought the food back to the car, handing off the small order of chicken that he’d gotten for Connor. The android didn’t eat often- he didn’t need to the way humans did- but Hank had won him over as far as the occasional indulgence went.  
  
They ate in silence for a while. Connor was staring out the window of the car. He had his quarter in his left hand, not playing with it but tapping it lightly against his leg as he picked at his food. He was obviously meditating on what they’d learned from those androids, cross-referencing it with everything else they knew in that highly efficient and effective way of his.  
  
This was not, by and large, the first time Hank had had to deal with a missing coworker. The high-risk nature of police-work meant that his fellow officers were placed in dangerous situations every day, and the odds of not coming home that night got higher every time. Hank had, in the nearly thirty years of service with the police department that he had, buried over a dozen police officers- that didn’t include firemen and other emergency workers he’d known. Detroit could be a goddamn _mean_ city, and it was not kind to anyone, including its authority figures.  
  
Hank did not especially like Gavin _or_ RK900- he thought the guys were a pair of fucking pricks. But Christ, he didn’t want them _dead_ either. The occasional punch to the jaw and copious ‘fuck yous’ were enough to manage them, and Hank dealt those out as needed. He did not want to be attending their funerals next week, and his gut was getting uneasily settled with the idea that that was exactly what would be happening. If a missing person’s odds of being alive plummeted after the first twenty-four hours, then an officer’s plummeted after the first _six,_ and they were already well past that; and even if Gavin was alive, they knew for a fact that RK900 had a serious injury, so his odds of survival were even worse.  
  
Though it might have smacked of selfish, Hank was additionally worried for Connor’s mental health where RK900 was concerned: Connor had- to put it lightly- a complicated relationship with his lookalike, varying between pitying and straight-up hostile depending on the day and the situation at hand. RK900, for his part, had never made his disdain for Connor and deviancy a secret, and Hank could understand (much like with Gavin) why Connor might not be feeling anything especially fuzzy towards him.  
  
But there was this complex _thing_ that seemed to exist between androids of the same model and series, the ones that were identical in appearance. When they’d first seen RK900- before they’d known he was an asshole- Connor had been slack-jawed and eager to introduce himself. And he’d been heartbroken when RK900 had (fucking _heartlessly_ ) rubbed it in his face that all of the other RK800s had been destroyed by Cyberlife; Christopher had only recently been discovered, and until that point Connor had been morosely convinced he was the last RK800 in existence. Hank was half-convinced this weird _thing_ between identical androids- or at least for Connor, whose lookalikes numbered a measly two- created a connection not unlike the one that might exist between identical humans. Not _family_ , but an instinctive sense of obligation. Point being, if RK900 died, it would hurt Connor regardless of whether or not he really liked the guy or not.  
  
It was a shitty situation all around, and Hank didn’t like it.  
  
It was better for everyone if those two assholes were alive and kicking.  
  
“Alright,” Hank said after a while, “What’s on your mind, champ?”  
  
Connor hesitated, still looking out the window. “Do you know what Occam’s Razor is, Hank?”  
  
Hank thought for a moment, pausing between bites. “It rings a bell.”  
  
“It’s a problem-solving principle,” Connor explained. “It basically says that the simplest solution is usually the right one.”  
  
“Seems simple enough.”  
  
“Yeah.” Connor was frowning. “What if we’re over-thinking this?”  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
“Annabelle said that there were a multitude of hallways and rooms in the torture-area. We assumed that the owners of the Hostel moved house after they were caught by the police. But the androids we interviewed suggested that the facility was fairly large, with a lot of hallways and rooms. What if the owners haven’t moved house- what if they’ve just gotten back to business in a different section of the old one?”  
  
Hank thought on that for a moment. It made sense: The owners would be working in an area and place they were familiar with. And they’d certainly had opportunity to set up shop again: It had actually been the army that had flushed out the Hostel when the recall on all androids had been issued, and the army had been more concerned with rounding up androids than they’d been arresting sick fucks who tortured them for fun. And hell, even if these guys had been torturing and murdering androids, anything they did prior to December 10th wasn’t actionable under the Clean Slate Act. While they’d absolutely committed a crime, they couldn’t be prosecuted for it… So why _not_ set up right where they’d been before? Why not just tuck themselves a little further into the darkness and go right back to business?  
  
No one was paying attention, after all.  
  
Hank shook his head and started the car. “Connor, there are times when I worry you’ll put me out of a job.”  
  
Connor smiled. “I doubt that, Hank.”  
  
[---]  
  
The warehouse was abandoned when they got there.  
  
The sun had set, and the whole neighborhood was pitch-black save for the odd, dim lamplight here and there.  
  
“They were poking around that torture-chamber place earlier,” Hank remarked as they got out of the car. “But they could have missed something, maybe a room or hallway that didn’t check out. Annabelle made it sound like it was pretty confusing.”  
  
“And these are people who seem to have experience running illegal enterprises,” Connor agreed. “Androids weren’t considered alive, but we _were_ considered private property, and most ran into the thousands in terms of cost. Stealing androids for this Hostel would have meant stealing thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment, never mind the amount needed for constant repairs.”  
  
The warehouse was silent when they stepped inside, and Hank was immediately unsettled. When there was a bevy of other police around it had seemed far less intimidating; but now that they’d stopped making noise, the rats might feel safe enough to come out and take a look around. Hank didn’t like reminding himself of his age too often, but he had to consider that even apart from RK900, Gavin was a thirty-six year-old cop who went to the gym on a regular basis and was pretty damn good at hand-to-hand combat. That someone had managed to overpower _them_ did not speak well to Hank and Connor’s odds.  
  
“Guns out,” He muttered to Connor. “Just in case.”  
  
Connor nodded, and drew his from his belt.  
  
Hank manned the flashlight as they descended the staircase. The only sounds were their footsteps and the faint drip of water from somewhere below. When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Hank flicked the light back and forth. If the warehouse had been intimidating, the hallway was even worse. The young officer had not exaggerated when she’d said the place was creepy- it really _did_ look like a torture-chamber down here, something right out of a horror-movie. It did nothing to settle Hank, who gripped the flashlight tighter. “Do you hear anything I don’t?” He whispered, wincing as his words sounded too-loud in the silence.  
  
“No,” Connor whispered back. “I don’t hear anything.”  
  
Neither did Hank, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone lurking in the dark. To be honest, though, he was growing increasingly worried that if they _did_ find some hidden nook somewhere that the only thing they’d find was Gavin and RK900’s bodies. Tripping over them unintentionally would be something else straight out of a horror movie and Hank was not into it, not at all.  
  
They crept down the hallway, sliding around the corner at the end as carefully and quietly as possible. Hank could see why Annabelle might be uncertain as to how many rooms and hallways there were- they all looked the same at first glance, and the effect would probably be much worse if someone was trying to escape in a fit of panic and adrenaline (or whatever the hell it was androids had in equivalent to it). But when they came to the end of this hallway, they hit a wall; Hank looked around, wondering if maybe it simply turned a different direction or was placed somewhere else along the line of doors, but nothing: The row of doors ended in a solid wall.  
  
“Annabelle said the place had a lot of hallways,” Hank muttered. “Does this look like a lot of hallways to you?”  
  
Connor shook his head. “No, it does not. And as she was here for a few months, I tend to trust her judgment.” He paused. “Shine the light on the floor for a second.” Hank did, and Connor scanned the floor around them, staring intently. “It’s possible we have the wrong location,” He murmured, “Either that or-” He froze suddenly, eyes going wide. “-Hank, Thirium!”  
  
“There’s probably stains everywhere,” Hank said, disappointed. “They tortured androids here- the walls probably bleed Thirium too, if you hit them hard enough.”  
  
“But _this_ is fresh.” Connor was following the trail like a goddamn bloodhound on a scent. He approached a door on their left, next to the wall they’d just hit. When he opened the door, Hank shone the flashlight over his shoulder. “In here.” Hank reluctantly followed him in, disliking the idea of taking another step deeper into the dark.  
  
The room they’d entered seemed to be a workshop at first- at least until, stomach sinking, Hank saw the chair strapped to the floor in the center. A chill went down his spine; if androids could have ghosts, he suspected this place would be writhing with them. Illogical as it sounded, he felt like a character in a horror movie: Something was probably lurking in the darkness waiting to kill them, something perfectly visible and obvious to the audience and not them.  
  
Connor paced over to the worktable, which was covered in tools. Hank suspected that they were much more horrifying to Connor than him, because Connor could actually _see_ any Thirium that still lingered on the pliers and crowbars. He examined the tabletop, then the floor, then the wall beside the table-  
  
_-click._  
  
They both froze.  
  
The section of wall that the worktable was attached to moved, sliding open slightly. A sliver of dim light was visible through the crack, and Hank could hear…  
  
God. He could clearly hear voices that had been _completely_ inaudible a second ago.  
  
Connor and Hank looked to one another.  
  
“Call it in,” Hank said in a low voice.  
  
Connor looked between him and the door, hesitant. “We’re waiting for backup?” He whispered.  
  
“No,” Hank said, flipping the safety off his gun. “We have two officers in immediate threat of death or bodily harm- we’re going in. But we’re making sure that _our_ SOS goes properly out before we go busting in. If RK900 and Gavin couldn’t handle this shit, we might not be able to either and it might help if we can yell ‘backup’s on its way’ before they decide whether or not we’re worth killing.”  
  
“Good idea.” Connor’s LED spun yellow for a full minute, then back to blue. “They’re notified…” A pause. “…Fowler’s sending backup. He wants us to wait.”  
  
“Too late.”  
  
Hank shut off the flashlight and carefully pulled open the door.  
  
It opened into another hallway; the light grew brighter and then brightest as they rounded around a corner. If Hank had to guess, they’d done it this way to avoid tipping anyone off that there was anything hidden behind the wall. Peering around the corner, they saw a long hallway stretched before them, identical to the others save for the fact that it was lit up… And some of the rooms were obviously occupied, judging from the sounds coming from them.  
  
_Shit,_ Hank thought. _Shit, shit, shit._  
  
The loudest, calmest voices were coming from a few doors down on their right. Hank tapped Connor on the shoulder and motioned to the room. “Watch my back,” He whispered as softly as he could. “Shoot to kill.”  
  
Connor nodded, LED glowing yellow.  
  
Hank approached the door, keeping low even as his knees screamed from the position. He concentrated, listening to the words on the other side: “I dunno, I guess they got a shot.”  
  
“Based on _what?_ The Lions did shit last year and they’ll do shit this year, mark me.”  
  
“I’m goin’ based on _reality_ , like how-”  
  
Hank stopped listening and put his hand on the handle, turning it slowly. The two guys leaning against the wall didn’t notice because, mercifully, they were too involved in their football talk to care about anything else in the room. Hank pushed the door open just a little more, just a _little_ to see if anyone else was-  
  
Was-  
  
_FUCK._  
  
Hank got up and shoved the door open in one big motion, gun raised. “ _Freeze! Detroit Police!_ ”  
  
The two guys jumped a mile- one’s hands went up, and the other reached for something on his belt.  
  
**_BANG._**  
  
He fell over in a heap- the second one stayed where he was, looking stricken but motionless. Hank surged forward. “Back up!” He barked, and the man backed away obediently. Hank knelt down and yanked the gun the first guy had been going for off his belt- if he wasn’t dead he would be soon, because Hank had shot him center-mass and he was bleeding like it had hit an artery. Once the downed one was securely disarmed, Hank approached the other. “Turn around! Hands on your head!”  
  
“I’ve got the door,” Connor said from behind.  
  
Hank yanked out his cuffs and roughly grabbed at the man’s arms. “Is there anyone else down here other than you?” He asked sharply. “Anyone else armed?”  
  
“Uh- uh-”  
  
“I’m taking that as a _yes_. Connor, keep an ear out for backup.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
Once the man was cuffed, Hank turned to the center of the room, to the reason he’d made the decision to charge in when he had:  
  
Gavin and RK900 were both strapped to chairs, seemingly unconscious.  
  
Or maybe dead.  
  
“Gavin?” Hank grabbed the younger man’s shoulder carefully and gave it a little shake. No response; he knelt down and started to undo the straps around his ankles and wrists. There had been no human blood in the warehouse or garage, but there was plenty of it now: Gavin’s shirt, which Hank was _pretty_ sure used to be gray, was now nearly black and soaked through with blood. His jeans had been pretty drenched too, and blood and saliva dripped from his mouth. But now that he was close enough, Hank could tell he was breathing. A quick glance at RK900 was less revealing- android lungs served as coolant systems, so they didn’t strictly need to breathe to be alive- revealed blue blood dripping from his face. His white coat was gone, sleeves of the black shirt beneath rolled up: On his arms were burns and cracked casing. Hank’s stomach turned when he realized that RK900 was missing all the fingers on his right hand.  
  
“Hank, we’ve got incoming!”  
  
**_BANG. BANG._**  
  
Hank’s heart pounded as chips of wood and concrete flew near Connor’s feet: Someone was shooting at him. Connor returned fire confidently, and Hank considered getting up to help him, but it would have been pointless- the doorway wasn’t wide enough for them both to fit safely in it. Right now, he had to focus on getting RK900 and Gavin out of these chairs and out of the way so they wouldn’t be in the line of fire if the shooting came closer.  
  
“You alright?” Hank asked as he fumbled with the last strap on Gavin’s right wrist.  
  
“I’m fine,” Connor said, taking a quick look into the hallway. “I don’t hear them, and they’re not shooting anymore. Either they’re regrouping, or they’ve retreated completely.” Suddenly, there were sounds from the hall and Connor lifted his gun again, darting his head out for another quick look.  
  
“ _Detroit_ _Police!_ ” A voice boomed from the hall. “ _Identify yourselves! Come out with your hands up!_ ”  
  
Connor and Hank both slumped with relief.  
  
“Officers Connor and Anderson present!” Connor called back. “Be careful! At least two hostiles with guns somewhere in the building!”  
  
Hank undid the strap, and Gavin tipped forward to fall against him. At first, with him being deadweight and unresponsive, Hank thought he was unconscious.  
  
But then Gavin’s face pressed into his shoulder more insistently, and Hank knew he was at least somewhat aware of what was going on.  
  
_Shit._  
  
“Someone get paramedics down here! Two officers down!”  
  
[---]  
  
The official count came in:  
  
Gavin’s hip was broken.  
  
So was his knee and three of his ribs.  
  
He’d re-broken the arm he’d broken at Christmas.  
  
One of his teeth had been crushed in his mouth, and they were going to have to dig the remains out.  
  
There were numerous lacerations of varying severity on his chest, back, stomach, legs, all in the sensitive, meaty places that would hurt worse. None of them seemed to be crippling in nature, thankfully.  
  
The obligatory rape-test had not come up with any traces of semen or other biological evidence, but there was evidence of trauma around the genitals and anus, which led to the obvious conclusions being drawn.  
  
Hank and Connor sat in the waiting room. RK900 had been brought to the android hospital about ten minutes away from the human one, and Hank knew at some point he’d have to ask Connor if he wanted to go over there and look after his fellow android, but for now he was focused on Gavin.  
  
“I know he’s been absolutely shitty to you from the moment you got here, Connor, and I’m sorry,” Hank said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “God knows working with this prick has had more than its share of difficulties over the years. There are times when I have hated his goddamn guts and not regretted it a bit. But I… Seeing him like that, that was- that was too much, even for me.”  
  
“It’s alright,” Connor responded gently. “You told me he wasn’t always like this.” He paused. “Not completely, anyways: You said he’d always had ‘shades of asshole’ to him.”  
  
Hank gave a soft, weak chuckle. “Yeah, that was it.”  
  
Once, Gavin had just been one of many loud, cocky newbies in the DPD. He’d had an attitude that he’d been smart enough to keep under control when he’d had to, and he’d been an arrogant little shit even back then. But even if he’d been an asshole, he told jokes that people laughed at, got invited to go out for drinks after work, had been someone that most cops had shrugged at and said “Eh, he could use a foot up his ass every now and then, but not bad.”  
  
It was after his dad’s death that there’d been a noticeable shift from ‘ass’ to ‘ass _hole_ ’. Reed Sr. had OD’d in a Red Ice den in a bad part of town, Gavin had been called in to identify the body, and from then on it had been all downhill. The souring of Gavin’s general temperament had happened over little less than a decade, had manifested in a thousand little ways: The hair-trigger temper, his willingness to get more physical with suspects than he needed to, his snide comments anytime someone crossed him or challenged him, and his almost cartoonish hatred of androids (which had originally only been a mocking dislike). Hank, Jeff, and so many other officers had tried so many different ways to reel Gavin back in, from gentle understanding to, literally, trying to beat the attitude out of him on a few occasions.  
  
Nothing worked.  
  
Gavin was either just okay to work with, or he was a goddamn nightmare. There was little in-between, especially where he and Hank were concerned: Hank had been part of the sting that had brought that drug-den down, and while he’d never confirmed it, Gavin had been _unusually_ hostile to him afterwards; maybe he was lashing out, maybe he was bitter that Hank and his team hadn’t brought down the den sooner- who knew? But that had been when Gavin had really taken a turn for the worst, and his already shaky relationship with Hank had crumbled into something outright ugly…  
  
…With one notable exception.  
  
Cole had died, and everything had been a nightmare.  
  
Everything.  
  
Hank had been stuck in a cloud of misery, unable to comprehend much of anything. People apologized for his loss, gave him the Look that people give you when you’re the unlucky bastard that’s won the Universe’s-Bitch-of-the-Week Lottery and lost someone dear to you. Logically Hank knew he wasn’t the first man to lose a child, but in that time and place, he had felt like every bad feeling incarnated into a single being, a living embodiment of grief.  
  
And everyone was so sorry for him. So, so sorry, sorry enough to regurgitate the same cloying, heartfelt vocabulary of pity at him: They were so very sorry at what a tragic accident it had been, how Cole was a precious angel in heaven now, and blah, blah, _fucking_ blah. Hank had thought he would go mad with it, thought that he would scream and punch the next person who called Cole a ‘beautiful child’ and a ‘sweet little boy’ and ‘an angel’.  
  
Then Gavin stepped up, eyes on the ground.  
  
“Sorry, Hank,” was all he said. “Fucking sucks. Cole was a good kid.” No flowery bullshit about heaven, no patronizing assurances that he was _there_ for him: Just a straightforward ‘I’m sorry your life sucks’ and an offer to get a drink after it was over. They’d gone out, still in their damn funeral suits, and got drunk while watching a football game. They didn’t talk about Cole, just grunted occasional commentary on the game and ordered more alcohol. It had been a temporary truce, just for that night- and Hank had been grateful for that too, in a way, that Gavin went back to being an asshole rather than pulling his punches because Hank’s kid was dead.  
  
No. Hank did hate Gavin sometimes- he hated Gavin a _lot_ of times because Gavin could be downright _hateable_ when he wanted to be, but he had never completely, utterly hated him. There was something resembling a decent human-being under the douchebag exterior, something Gavin seemed to be determined to smother to death, but it was there, and Hank had certainly met worse people. Even a cynical old salt like Hank, who’d seen his fair share of dark things over years and years with the police, had trouble believing that a generally bad person didn’t have even a _speck_ of good in them.  
  
“Any word on RK900?”  
  
Connor stiffened slightly. “He’s alive, and stable.”  
  
Hank knew that Connor wasn’t fond of RK900, but recently that lack of fondness seemed to be tinged with a sort of bitter pity, a regret that RK900 was still more or less a slave to his programming and, as such, a slave to Cyberlife. Though he and Hank rarely discussed it openly, it seemed that Connor was attributing RK900s rather fanatic behavior to whatever intense anti-deviancy programming had been installed in him. Working with him wasn’t fun, but Connor seemed to be taking the attitude he received from his look-alike less personally than he once had. “Wanna go see him?”  
  
Connor thought for a moment, eyes on the floor. “I’m not sure he’d appreciate my presence,” He said tactfully, and Hank was inclined to agree: RK900 would probably brush off his concern as irrational deviancy-driven coding.  
  
But was staying here any more fruitful? Would Gavin want to see him or talk to him when he woke up? Going through something like this was pretty goddamn traumatic, and trauma had a way of changing people- and often not for the better. Gavin was either going to be a hot mess or a raging monster when he woke up.  
  
And as shitty as it sounded, Hank was kind of hoping for a mess.


	2. Chapter 2

“Detective, you need to get up.”  
  
Gavin’s eyes creaked open.  
  
Pink-orange light painted the walls and floors of his apartment. The colors blended together pleasantly, melding together with the faded brown wood of the floor, and Gavin stared at it for so long as his brain hovered nicely in that post-sleep fog. Eventually, he felt a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Detective, you need to get up.”  
  
Slowly, feeling weirdly detached from his body, Gavin sat up in the bed. He felt a familiar ache in his left arm as he braced himself on the mattress, and another in his hip when he put pressure on his lower-body, one that radiated out to his leg and back. He couldn’t bend his left knee properly because it was still in a brace… Why was it in a brace again? Oh, yeah, he’d had surgery on it. Why’d he had surgery on it?  
  
…Oh. Right.  
  
Reality came crashing down on him with the agony of a thousand soul-crushing boulders, reality that was so ugly that it managed to penetrate not just his drowsy mind, but also the veil that the medication had put over him. Whether it was the pain medication or the fucking elephant-tranquilizer anxiety medication that had done it, Gavin didn’t know and didn’t care; it made him not completely want to give up and die, and so he wasn’t questioning it.  
  
“How long has it been since we got back here, house- home?” The words came like water escaping a cracked cup, trickling mindlessly out whether he wanted them to or not. Gavin just hoped he’d been coherent enough to make his point.  
  
RK900 frowned, cocked his head. “It has been twelve hours.”  
  
Twelve hours?  
  
Fuck.  
  
Gavin was thirty-six. He had… Twenty, thirty, uh… He had a _lot_ more years alive unless some criminal asshole gunned him down first, and he was only twelve hours out of the hospital from the worst goddamn experience he’d ever had?  
  
When… When had _that_ been?  
  
“How long since we got outta the…? The _thing?_ ”  
  
RK900’s expression lost some of its serenity. “That was nearly a month ago.”  
  
_That_ long? Still, not long enough when Gavin remembered those loads of years he had left to live before death took him into its sweet fucking embrace.  
  
Everything had been a blur at the hospital, a blur of pain and discomfort and confusion. They’d said things to him and he’d responded, but trying to recall it now was like trying to recall a conversation you’d had in a dream. Gavin remembered Hank coming into his room a few times, telling him he’d looked like someone had beaten him with the ugly stick (“I mean, more than usual,”) before sitting down and watching a football game on the hospital TV with him. He’d grunted some commentary here and there but largely remained silent for the duration of it.  
  
Gavin thought there was something weirdly significant about it all, but he was too fucked on pain medication to think of it.  
  
RK900 had come home with him today, and for the first time that struck Gavin as odd- why the fuck was RK900 in his damn house? He didn’t know where RK900 went when he wasn’t at the DPD, but it sure as fuck wasn’t Gavin’s house. Maybe he didn’t have anything better to do, anyplace better to go or anyone better to be with; it wouldn’t be the most shocking thing Gavin had heard. After all, Gavin was an asshole and he knew it. And RK900 wasn’t much better: He was chilly at best to Connor (and every other deviant android he met, which was all of them), and deliberately, intensely robotic and distant from the humans around him. It was like he was doing his god-damndest to prove that he wasn’t one of those stupid, emotional deviants: He was a good little android doing what he was told like good little Cyberlife androids are _supposed_ to do.  
  
Nobody really liked him. It was one of the few things they had in common. RK900 and Connor had both gone down with that virus back in January, the one that could have killed them, but at the DPD it had primarily been Connor’s (and the other DPD android staff) health that had been inquired on, not RK900’s. Gavin alone had been the one to set up shop and stay close to RK900, and to this day he didn’t know why he’d bothered; it wouldn’t have made a difference to him if RK900 died. He was a bot that acted like a bot, and his death wouldn’t have had Gavin losing any sleep. He told himself that keeping an eye on RK900 was better than being at work and having to deal with the fallout of half Detroit’s androids falling into comas- or morbid curiosity about RK900 and Connor’s mortality, whichever came first.  
  
Funny thing was, RK900 had recovered from that virus and gotten back to work pretty much immediately, so if he wasn’t back to work right now it was probably because Fowler had forcibly put him on leave. When officers went through traumatic situations- and Gavin assumed this new fuck-shit rule extended to androids as well- they were automatically put on leave. It was partly a consideration for their mental health, but maybe more so a way of covering Fowler and the Detroit PD’s ass in the event said traumatized officer came back to work too early and did something stupid because they were still fucked.  
  
In this situation, though, it struck Gavin nearly as funny: He was fucked to hell and back alright, but RK900? He was fine. Sure, he’d screamed when they’d cut him and beat him and ripped his fingers off and burned him in that pit-hole of a nightmare dungeon (Connor, that little fucking liar, had sworn up and down on the Ortiz case that androids didn’t feel pain), but what did any of that matter to a cold, hard machine that didn’t feel emotion? RK900 didn’t care. Looking at him now, a month out, you’d never guess he’d been down there with Gavin, wouldn’t guess from his appearance or from his attitude. He’d gone right back to being everybody’s favorite metal asshole who could make himself useful to make up for the fact that no one liked him. His only job right now, apparently, was to make sure Gavin didn't die, overdose, or starve.  
  
So, no harm in letting him stay.  
  
Yet.  
  
“Why the fuck am I up?”  
  
“You need your medication. You’re overdue.”  
  
Oh. No wonder being awake for a minute or two had brought him to such a level of Fuck Everything, and the aches were singing a little louder than usual- he needed to take his pills. RK900 held out the three bottles, watching for a moment as Gavin struggled with the child-proof cap of the first one before quietly taking them back and opening them himself. Gavin clumsily dragged the necessary numbers of pills from the container- one for the anti-anxiety, two for the pain, and two for the antibiotic, and dry-swallowed them all, ignoring the glass of water RK900 offered him.  
  
“You should eat something.”  
  
“Nnh,” Gavin grunted.  
  
“You could become nauseous without something in your stomach.”  
  
Nausea was the least of his problems. Gavin didn’t want to eat, he wanted to go back to that pleasant, drugged-out sleep that felt so good before his mind could start forcing him to reflect on things he didn’t want to think about. He laid back down and let that be his answer.  
  
RK900 made a sound that could have been a sigh. “I’ll leave some crackers on the nightstand.”  
  
He left the room, and Gavin shut his eyes.  
  
Sleep took him so, _so_ easily, and he loved it.  
  
[---]  
  
_They’ve ordered RK900 to stay still while they work on him._  
  
_This ugly motherfucker has a gun to Gavin’s temple, and the whole while RK900’s eyes are boring into his._  
  
_Is he afraid? He doesn’t look it. Occasionally there’s a twitch, like the guys who’ve opened the panel on his back and started tinkering in there have hit something they shouldn’t have, but he doesn’t yell, doesn’t cry out in pain even though he’s been shot through the shoulder and is bleeding really bad._  
  
_Gavin realizes with a creeping sort of discomfort that he’s not sure he wants them to kill RK900. He doesn’t like the bastard, sure, but he’s gotten used to him, and…_  
  
_Damn it, Connor’s gotten to him._  
  
_Maybe he sees androids as a little more than just a hunk of metal and wires now. He definitely sees them as something more than they were before._  
  
_Not that he plans on admitting to that. Maybe when Hell freezes over._  
  
_“ **Ngh!** ” RK900 makes a strangled sound, and one of the assholes laughs. _  
  
_“There we go. But just to be sure-”_  
  
_He digs his finger into the gunshot wound on RK900’s shoulder, and the android lets out a surprisingly sincere shout of pain, twisting away from them in a display of unnervingly human agony._  
  
_Gavin shuts his eyes._  
  
_He doesn’t need- or **want** \- to see this._  
  
[---]  
  
“Detective, I want to apologize.”  
  
It took Gavin’s sluggish mind a moment to realize what he’d heard.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I want to apologize.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
RK900’s LED was spinning yellow, but his face was as calm, as cool, as impassive as ever. “It’s my fault we were apprehended.”  
  
God, the logic was too much for Gavin to handle right now. He could barely get his pasta to wind around the twines of his fork. RK900 had more or less dragged him out of bed and to the kitchen table- and either the bastard had ordered out while he was sleeping or he’d cooked it himself, because food was on the table when he got there. Gavin didn’t know or care, really. “How d’ya figure?”  
  
“I left you alone,” RK900 responded promptly, the apology- as with everything else he did- a perfunctory duty. “I should have stayed with you. We were in unfamiliar surroundings investigating a situation that was obviously treacherous, and we would have been safer together. I should not have stepped away. If I hadn’t, we likely wouldn’t have been apprehended by the suspects. Or at least, not as easily.”  
  
Maybe it was just the medication talking, but Gavin was just so fucking ridiculously _calm_ right now. Normally it would have annoyed the piss out of him that RK900 was reminding him of his human inferiority, would have been offended and raging about how he could take care of himself, that RK900 was such an arrogant sonofabitch for assuming that his mere presence could have saved them both- never mind the suggestion that all of it could have been avoided by just changing a few little things, that everything that had gone on in that room could have been avoided altogether. Normally that would have pushed every one of his buttons.  
  
But right now, Gavin just did not give a fuck.  
  
It was a beautiful, freeing feeling.  
  
It was also probably a sign that he was in the beginning stages of a nervous breakdown, but whatever.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“‘Okay’?”  
  
“I forgive you, whatever.” Gavin really couldn’t concentrate on too much right now. The trade-off for being calm, apparently, was becoming a zombie that could barely string a sentence together. Instead he hyper-focused on the strand of pasta he was clumsily trying to twirl around his fork.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Gavin managed to shovel a bit of food into him, eyeing RK900 unsteadily as he did. Why was RK900 here? The question was a familiar one, and Gavin felt like maybe he’d answered it before, but everything was so foggy and disjointed that he couldn’t remember what answer he’d come up with. “Why’re you here?”  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“Why’re you _here_ , not working?”  
  
“Captain Fowler has put me on leave.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
RK900’s LED flickered from blue straight to red, and if he were sharper, Gavin might have caught it and gone through the implications of it. As it was, he wasn’t nearly quick enough for that now, and so the hint passed untouched. “He did not specify the length. I suspect it’s connected to your leave.”  
  
“That’s dumb.”  
  
RK900 didn’t say anything, but Gavin suspected he agreed.  
  
[---]  
  
_So, Gavin knows what’s coming._  
  
_Or at least, he **thinks** he does._  
  
_Part of the whole ‘thing’ about this investigation was to make sure no one was poking around the old android-torture-house, and it doesn’t exactly take a brain-surgeon to figure out that there’s gonna be some real pain in his future. Even if he didn’t know what this place was, the fact that they’ve captured them rather than killing them says that they’re about to be interrogated for information or tortured for fun._  
  
_Gavin’s not exactly pleased, but he’s been in worse situations and clawed his way out. It’s just a matter of waiting for the right moment and never, ever letting his guard down. He has to be ready._  
  
_They strap him and RK900 into chairs, sit them across from one another._  
  
_The android looks cool as a cucumber, as always. It’s one of the many reasons why Gavin hates him so goddamn much: Nothing ever **gets** to him, like he’s just so above it all._  
  
_“Hello boys,” Ugly Motherfucker says, walking into the room and twirling a hammer in his hand._  
  
_“Hello, ugly fuckface,” Gavin responds, going for bored rather than rattled and keeping an eye on that hammer even as he tries not to look concerned._  
  
_Ugly Motherfucker laughs._  
  
_“Oh, we’re gonna be **great** friends.”_  
  
_And then he swings the hammer down, bashing it against Gavin’s knee._  
  
[---]  
  
Gavin awoke to something cold pressing against his forehead.  
  
“You have a fever.”  
  
“Cool,” Gavin croaked, his vision blurring and rolling and forcing him to close his eyes again. He felt like deadweight on the bed- hot, sticky deadweight. He kicked the covers off, trying to find relief, only to shudder and drag them back up again when he was suddenly far too cold. "Haven't had one of those in a while."  
  
RK900 secured the cloth on his forehead, and then began gently prodding up and down his torso. “Does anything hurt?” He asked. “Anything that sticks out as especially painful?”  
  
“No,” Gavin croaked. It was all just a big blur of pain and discomfort and _hot._  
  
They sliced him up good. Real good. Gave him lots of cuts that bleed, lots of cuts to get infected from the unholy lack of sanitation in that torture-chamber. Gavin felt them when his medication started to wear off, the pinching and the itching as the skin healed, the stinging and the soreness from the ones that weren’t healing quite so quickly. He wondered which one had done it, which one was red and seeping pus right now; the big ones that were still healing were covered in bandages and so he couldn’t tell just from looking.  
  
“How’s your stomach?”  
  
“Hmh.”  
  
“Is that good, or bad?”  
  
“Eh.”  
  
Gavin wasn’t trying to be difficult- he genuinely could not conjure a better response than that. He couldn’t concentrate enough to examine how his stomach felt and give a concise overview of how he felt. He stared mindlessly into the dark past RK900’s arm and chest, unable to do anything else, unable to make enough neurons fire to really think; they’d overheated like the engine of a car.  
  
If he had ever been this sick before, Gavin didn’t recall it. This was a fucking month of _firsts_ for him.  
  
RK900, for his part, seemed to understand that Gavin was beyond speech. “If it climbs any higher, I’ll have to bring you to a hospital.”  
  
Gavin grunted in response.  
  
Eventually everything clouded over, and he lost touch with reality and everything in it.  
  
[---]  
  
_Gavin doesn’t know what’s coming._  
  
_He’s an idiot for ever thinking he did._  
  
_These guys are professionals: They know how to cause pain, whether it’s to a human or to an android. They also know how to dot their I’s and cross their T’s and how to securely fasten restraints and bolt doors and train their guards not to let anyone escape. He doesn’t know why he expected any less- it’s a **business** , after all, not a weekend hobby-shop._  
  
_As Gavin grows more desperate, he hopes that RK900 will come up with something, that that computer-brain of his will churn out some option Gavin hasn’t thought of yet. Never has he so badly wanted to be out-thought by the fucking android._  
  
_At one point, Gavin is wordlessly relieved to see RK900 making an attempt at the strap on his right wrist, fingers picking carefully, awkwardly at the leather and the buckle when they can reach it. He’s careful to stop when their captors get to close._  
  
_But eventually, they catch him._  
  
_“ **AH!** ” RK900 barks as the hammer comes down on his knuckles with a crunch that makes Gavin cringe._  
  
_“Golly!” Ugly Motherfucker sings. “That looks painful. Let me help you with that.”_  
  
_Then he takes a pair of pliers off the worktable and rips RK900’s fingers off._  
  
_The screaming alone nearly makes Gavin vomit._  
  
[---]  
  
Back in the hospital again.  
  
The fever spiked to 104, which meant that Gavin’s brain had literally been boiling in his skull, which would certainly explain the loopy I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude he’d been rocking. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten to the emergency room; all he remembered was waking up with a nurse taking his blood-pressure and trying to coax him into answering some questions.  
  
It was two days after being admitted and his fever was down to a manageable 99.2 that Gavin was finally clear enough to grasp the significance of his surroundings. RK900 was with him as ever, sitting calmly and unresponsively in a chair near his bed. He barely blinked, he didn’t speak, and he almost didn’t even seem to _breathe_. Goddamn, did Cyberlife just abandon Uncanny Valley protocol entirely with this one? That shit was creepy.  
  
A short, tentative knock on the door was a break in the creepfest. “Come in,” Gavin croaked, irritable at how difficult it was to speak normally.  
  
The door slid open, and a blonde teenage girl stood peering through the gap. Gavin stared at her for a moment as she hesitantly stepped inside, uncomprehending, until the revelation came from the heavens like a lightning-strike to the skull.  
  
(Or a hammer to the knee.)  
  
“You’re Luna,” He said, “I remember you, from the Cyberlife warehouse.”  
  
Luna smiled brightly. “That’s me!”  
  
Gavin, Connor, and Hank had snuck into a Cyberlife warehouse back in February, investigating some teen androids that Cyberlife was keeping under-wraps. The prevailing theory was that they’d been planning on selling the teenbots overseas so they could turn a profit (Cyberlife’s stocks had, obviously, done dismally since the revolution) and, in the process of uncovering these teenbots and revealing them to the public, the three of them had prevented that plan from going into action. Luna had been awoken by Connor in the warehouse so that he could interrogate her, and she had escaped with them when security arrived. Gavin himself had warded off the Cyberlife rep who’d come to get her and two other escaped teenbots, and Luna had been very grateful for it.  
  
“Connor told me you’d been injured,” Luna said, rocking on the balls of her feet and eyeing RK900 warily even as her LED spun blue. “So I brought you something.” She approached the bed and held the bag she’d been hiding behind her back out to him. Gavin blinked as he took it, fried brain trying to comprehend what was…  
  
…Jesus Christ, she made him cookies.  
  
The teenage android made him goddamn chocolate-chip cookies.  
  
What the fuck.  
  
What the _fuck._  
  
Gavin managed a weak, hollow smile. “Thanks, kid,” He croaked. “I… Appreciate this.” He’d never had it in him to be mean to kids. Even the android ones. Gavin was a dick, and he knew that like he knew the back of his hand. But even his dickery had its limits, and kids were a hard one.  
  
Luna beamed. “You’re welcome! I’ve never made food before, so I hope they’re alright.”  
  
They could taste like cardboard and he’d say they were great.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Gavin hated it when he felt like he just couldn’t be an asshole. It was like capping a pressure-valve and waiting for it to combust.  
  
“Well,” Luna said, maybe a little nervously, “I should probably go.”  
  
“Thanks for this, kid,” Gavin repeated, wondering if maybe there was something in his reaction that made her think he wasn’t grateful.  
  
“Feel better!” Luna backed out of the room with a little wave.  
  
Gavin reached over to the table beside the bed to put the cookies down, and suddenly saw why Luna had decided to depart so quickly: RK900’s LED was yellow, and he had an absolutely _piss_ look on his face. “What the hell?”  
  
RK900 glanced at him. “What? It was a deviant.”  
  
Gavin felt irritation, defensiveness flare up in him. “So? _Not_ being deviant obviously doesn’t make you the epitome of perfection.”  
  
“If you’re referring to my apology about our being captured, you said you forgave me.”  
  
“Yeah, and what I’m saying now is that you don’t need to be a bitch to her because you feel guilty about getting us both caught- your words, not mine.”  
  
“I don’t feel guilty,” RK900 remarked swiftly. “Androids are not capable of feeling guilt. I am simply expressing regret that my error in judgment has led to the serious complications that you’ve experienced, such as your injury and temporary leave from the department.”  
  
Gavin didn’t believe him.  
  
Holy _shit_ , Gavin didn’t believe him.  
  
RK900- he felt guilty about what had happened.  
  
Gavin had always wondered if RK900 was lying about what he felt- but now he wondered if the friggin’ android was lying to _himself_ about what he felt.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” He grunted. “Whatever you say.”  
  
[---]  
  
_How long have they been down here?_  
  
_It can’t be more than a handful of hours, but it feels like an eternity._  
  
_Gavin’s having trouble breathing, his chest hurts so bad. He might have a broken rib or two. His arm is **definitely** broken, and every time they do something new to him and he shakes or shouts the vibration makes him scream louder and harder._  
  
_RK900’s not doing much better. Gavin’s pretty sure he’s never been in so much pain in his short life, and if he’s not physically feeling it, he’s probably feeling it in the ego: Nothing humbles a guy like being made to scream like a bitch in front of his coworker and partner._  
  
_Apart from the finger-ripping, one of the worst ones was when Ugly Motherfucker looked at his shoulder and clucked his tongue. “That’s still bleeding pretty bad, isn’t it?” He’d said, considering. “Ricky, hand me the blowtorch, would you?”_  
  
_Gavin shuts his eyes, and the screaming starts on cue._  
  
_When he opens his eyes again RK900 is slumped in the chair, chest heaving as his lungs try to cool his system down. When he turns his head, Gavin sees that his face is wet._  
  
_RK900 is crying._  
  
_Gavin looks away and swears that no matter what happens, he won’t mention it to RK900 when (if) this is over._  
  
_Ever._  
  
[---]  
  
Apparently the doctors wanted to wean him off some of the meds.  
  
Gavin thought that was a bullshit idea and told them so.  
  
But since the doctors were the ones writing the prescriptions, he really didn’t have much say in the matter.  
  
The lack of pain meds was aggravating: It made everything difficult, his damaged bones creaking and aching when he sat or stood, and his torn flesh stinging far more ferociously when he stretched. But it was the lower anti-anxiety pills that made the worst impact: Without the pleasant haze of medication to keep them at bay, the bad memories and nightmares started to creep in, pushing at the soft and vulnerable parts of Gavin’s psyche and testing their yield.  
  
Gavin woke screaming and shaking ferociously in the night, a mess of terror and pain and muscle-memory. Whoever it was that said that the human brain forgets old pain over time should be strung up and fucking shot: Gavin remembered all of it in glorious-fucking-Technicolor, and it was awful; he doubted he would be forgetting it any time in the next century or so either. More than the pain was the shame: Gavin remembered how he’d broken, how he’d begged them to stop when the pain had become unbearable, how he’d screamed and cried and gagged at the worst of it. Those shady underworld _cocksuckers_ had made him beg, and when the shaking subsided he would scream into his pillow to vent the sheer _rage_ he felt. He wanted to head straight to the prison and beat the fuck out of them, wanted to make them beg for mercy the way they’d made him beg.  
  
But he couldn’t do that.  
  
That was an ' _abuse of authority_ ’, and that was ‘ _illegal._ ’  
  
That was the sort of thing that ended a cop’s career; assuming Gavin’s wasn’t over already. He hadn’t bothered checking in with Fowler yet, even though Hank had left him a couple of brief texts on his phone asking after him. Gavin knew he was still laughably unfit for service for the time being: His body was still aching too badly to undertake the sort of duties required for a cop, and his mind? Fuck, his mind was shot and mounted on a fucking wall.  
  
But he wasn’t the only one.  
  
Gavin got up one night after a particularly bad nightmare, knee burning where the hammer had made contact and intent on finding an ice-pack for it. He wandered clumsily through the darkness of his apartment, sluggishly registering a smell like… Like something was burning? What the hell would be burning? Gavin increased his hobbling as he got to the kitchen and saw a figure standing by the stove.  
  
He flicked the light on.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?”  
  
RK900 stiffened and turned towards him, eyes wide. “You’re awake.”  
  
“Yeah, so are you. What are you…?” Gavin’s mouth fell open as his eyes widened.  
  
The palm of RK900’s hand was badly burned; the stove was on and steaming. The android noticed Gavin’s stare. “I must have left the stove on,” He said, “I tried to shut it off, but missed the dial in the dark and caught the stove.”  
  
He was lying.  
  
Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , RK900 was _lying._  
  
There was no way RK900 could have gotten that degree of burn on accident. It had to have been that he’d had his hand stuck to the stovetop for a while- his burned pseudo-flesh was making that smell; Gavin even recognized it now from the torture-chamber. And the only reason why RK900 would be lying about how he’d been injured that badly would be because-  
  
“Holy fucking _balls_ ,” Gavin whispered. “Did you do this on purpose?”  
  
“Of course not. Harming myself would be counterproductive to my main purpose.” RK900 sounded like he was reciting from the goddamn Cyberlife Android 101 Manual; if such a thing existed, the fucker probably had it memorized. But the sheer fact that RK900 was reacting so goddamn _calmly_ to being accused of hurting himself, without any surprise or offense, was all the answer Gavin needed. RK900 was a cold motherfucker, but even _he_ could be surprised by things that he didn’t expect.  
  
“You _did_ ,” Gavin accused, “There’s no way you just _caught_ your hand on the stove. Either you did it completely deliberately or you _let_ your hand stay there even though it was burning.”  
  
“I didn’t.”  
  
“Yes you did!”  
  
“I _didn’t._ ”  
  
“ _Yes,_ you-”  
  
**_BAM._**  
  
“ _I didn’t!_ ” RK900 bellowed. He’d slammed his fist down on the edge of the table, and the wood had cracked under the force of it.  
  
Silence.  
  
Gavin had seen RK900 lose it only once before: He’d pushed him at work once to explain why it was he hated deviants so much. He’d asked him if it was _really_ so bad to be deviant, and RK900 had finally cracked and insisted that it was, becoming visibly angry and upset. He’d walked off into a conference room and stood in a corner, facing the wall and doing… Fuck, whatever it was androids did to calm down when they were on the verge of a mental fucking collapse.  
  
He was reminded so sharply of that moment now, because RK900 looked every bit as cracked as he had then. Gavin stared at him as his LED went from red to yellow to blue, as his posture slowly relaxed and realization dawned on his face. When he was finally calm again, he lacked that cool-as-fuck, flat expression that Gavin knew him best for: Instead, he looked horribly like Connor, small and puppy-dog-eyed.  
  
“I didn’t burn myself,” RK900 protested softly. “Not on purpose.”  
  
Gavin turned around and went back to bed.  
  
[---]  
  
_They do some other stuff to Gavin too._  
  
_There’s the breaking, sure._  
  
_There’s the cutting._  
  
_There’s the stabbing and the cracking and the burning._  
  
_But there’s other stuff._  
  
_They take him out of the chair and throw him so that he’s bent over the table with the tools on it, arms secured tightly, painfully behind his back._  
  
_And then they do other things._  
  
_When they’re done, they put him back in the chair and it hurts, **hurts** so badly that he screams hoarsely._  
  
_They mock him: Call him every name in the book, pat his ass awkwardly through the seat of the chair, snort to themselves. Then they walk out of the room, leaving Gavin and RK900 unsupervised for the first time._  
  
_The silence in the room is deafening._  
  
_“Detective Reed?”_  
  
_Gavin is crumpled in his seat and does not move._  
  
_He can’t. It hurts too much._  
  
_“Gavin?”_  
  
_He twitches._  
  
_“Are you alright?”_  
  
**_No!_** _Gavin wants to roar, wants to thrash in this fucking chair until sheer rage and willpower breaks the restraints. **No, I am not okay!**_  
  
_He doesn’t respond, and RK900 does not speak again._  
  
[---]  
  
So, Gavin was a little worried.  
  
It was bad enough that he was a basket-case; he didn’t need the robot living with him, the one capable of crushing metal with his bare hands turning into one too. God forbid Gavin catch him unawares and end up losing his head.  
  
And unfortunately, as much as he hates it, there’s only one person he can go to for some perspective on this.  
  
Gavin was sitting on the stoop of his apartment building, smoking a rare cigarette. The weather was decent enough today to be outside for a while, which was good because Gavin couldn’t get in and out so easily. RK900 was upstairs doing… Whatever. He didn’t know and didn’t care so long as it didn’t involve mutilating himself again.  
  
“Hello, Gavin,” A voice came from his right. “How are you feeling?”  
  
Gavin’s eyes rolled shut. “Being tortured didn’t turn me into a pussy, go-bot. You don’t need to look at me like that.”  
  
“I doubt it’s made you any less of an asshole, either,” Connor remarked flatly.  
  
Gavin barked out a sharp laugh- the first time he’d done so in ( _God_ ) months- and grinned at Connor. “Of _course_ I had to be out of work on the day your plasticene balls decided to drop.”  
  
Connor rolled his eyes and came to stand next to the stoop. He pulled that goddamn quarter out of his pocket and started flipping it. “What do you want, Gavin? I have better things to do than standing here and pretending I like you.”  
  
Gavin chortled again, taking a hit off the cigarette. “Goddamn, what have I missed to make you into such a mouthy little fuck?” He eyed the android suspiciously. “Did Hank tell you to act like this around me?”  
  
“No.” But Connor hesitated briefly in his coin-flipping, and now it was Gavin’s turn to roll his eyes. Of course Hank would tell him to fight fire with fire: He knew how Gavin worked better than anyone. “You said you needed to talk, Gavin, so talk.”  
  
Gavin mulled over it for a moment, and then decided that being straightforward was the best idea. “I think RK900 might of, uh… I think he burned himself last night.” A beat. “On purpose, I mean.”  
  
Connor dropped his coin. His head whipped towards Gavin. “Are you serious?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Are you _certain?_ ”  
  
“Not a hundred percent, but like… Ninety.”  
  
“Close enough,” Connor muttered, before stooping to pick up his coin. After a moment’s consideration, he sat down beside Gavin on the steps. “Did you confront him on it? Does he know you know?”  
  
“Yeah, he knows. He flipped out, too: Slammed his hand on the table and said he didn’t do it on purpose, which is bullshit. He didn’t mean to flip out either- once he calmed down it looked like he did something he didn’t mean to.”  
  
There was silence for a moment while Connor processed this. Gavin took another drag of his cigarette. “Where is he now?”  
  
“Upstairs. I don’t think he knows you’re here.”  
  
“Gavin,” Connor said, lowering his voice, “You need to be careful. I suspect RK900 isn’t a typical android.”  
  
“Yeah, no shit.”  
  
“No, I mean…” Connor frowned, looked away for a moment. “You remember, after we went to the warehouse back in February and found Luna, you remember how I said that it isn’t easy for an android to deviate?”  
  
“You _massively_ overestimate how closely I pay attention to you when you speak.”  
  
Connor turned back and glared at him. “Do you remember or not?”  
  
Gavin sighed, rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it rings a bell.”  
  
“I suspect that RK900 has been built and _trained_ by Cyberlife to withstand the usual traumas that trigger deviancy in an android. It’s far more difficult for him to deviate than it would be for the average android- which already requires considerable emotional shock and trauma.” Or, it went without saying, Android Jesus using his techno-magic to convert them while walking down the goddamn street.  
  
“So basically, he’s deviant-proof.”  
  
Connor looked uneasy. “I didn’t say that. The capacity for emotion is still there, it’s just…” He spread his hands helplessly. “It has nowhere to go. It’s too difficult for him to break through his programming; it’s been reinforced on a technological level to make sure he continues to follow orders, and I suspect it’s been supplemented with some sort of classical conditioning as well.” When Gavin gave him a dull say-it-again-in-English-asshole look, Connor sighed. “The sort of training you’d use on a dog: They’ve done more than just programmed him, they’ve trained him in such a way that he’s averse to the usual behaviors that would help an android go deviant. But he still feels things: The trauma, the negative emotions, the psychological pain are still there; he just can’t express them appropriately.”  
  
Emphasis on _appropriately_ , if last night was anything to go by.  
  
Gavin was starting to catch on. “So… He’s just gonna repress them until he physically can’t anymore, and then probably completely lose his shit.”  
  
Connor nodded grimly. “That’s my theory. And that’s why you need to be cautious: There’s no way of knowing what will trigger it. If he faces another major trauma, or if you push him a little on a day when he’s already been pushed too far…” Connor shook his head. “He could hurt you, Detective. He could kill you.”  
  
Gavin frowned. “I know I haven’t exactly been friendly to him, but you really think he’d do something that extreme?”  
  
Connor leaned forward. “My first mission in the field was negotiating the release of a little girl who’d been taken hostage by an android that had cared for her for years. They had a wonderful, loving relationship- right up until he found out that her father was having him replaced. He shot the father, then a police officer, and then took the girl hostage and threatened to jump off a roof with her.” Connor’s expression was hard. “That was an android that had honestly loved her and felt loved by her in return. I suspect that RK900 does not have such a bond with you, so do the math.”  
  
Gavin could do that math just fine. “So… What do I do? Should I even do something about this?” He jerked a thumb back towards the building.  
  
Connor shrugged uneasily. “I know this contradicts the point I’ve just made, but comparatively speaking… You _are_ the closest person to him. Obviously he’ll dismiss anything I say, and he’ll dismiss anything Hank says because he’s my friend- but you… You don’t like androids. You don’t see them as people. He can’t write you off as anthropomorphizing us, and he can’t write you off as someone who’s emotionally attached to him. You have a better chance at most than getting through to him.”  
  
Gavin glared at him. “Didn’t you _just_ say he could flip out on me _hard_ if I push him too far?”  
  
Connor stood up. “Shockingly, there’s a difference between your kind of pushing and the average person’s kind of pushing. I know you know the difference- use it.” He started to walk away.  
  
“Yeah?” Gavin called after him. “And how do you know that?”  
  
“Hank told me.”  
  
[---]  
  
_“Shoot it.”_  
  
_Gavin looks up at him blearily. Ugly Motherfucker is leaning on the back of the chair casually, a gun dangling from his hand._  
  
_“What?”_  
  
_“Shoot it.” He nodded to RK900, watching them dully from his own chair. “Shoot it, and I’ll let you go.”_  
  
_“ **What?** Bullshit.”_  
  
_“Seriously, man, hand to God,” Ugly Motherfucker says, batting his eyes innocently. “Think about it: You’re a fallible human. Your memory’s prone to lapses, especially in moments of high stress. And this has been pretty stressful for you!” He laughs. “But this thing- this **android** \- he has a memory that’s very accessible to the right people. It’s got our faces on camera, basically. We can’t let it go. So I’m throwing you a bone: Shoot it, and we’ll let you go.”_  
  
_Gavin stares back at him wordlessly._  
  
_“I mean, it’s just an android,” Ugly Motherfucker prods. “So what if we have to call them people now? It’s a hunk of plastic and metal. And you’re a human that’s been tortured: Who’s **really** gonna raise a fuss if you ‘kill’ it?”_  
  
_Gavin stares at him, and he thinks._  
  
_He thinks very, very hard._  
  
_And then he says, “Go fuck yourself.”_  
  
_Ugly Motherfucker sighs. “Fine… Be that way.”_  
  
_Gavin tells himself it’s because he’s not gonna play their game._  
  
_Obviously they won’t let him go._  
  
_Obviously they’re toying with him._  
  
_It’s absolutely not because he can’t bring himself to do it._  
  
_It’s not because he looks just as pitiful and in pain in that chair as Gavin does._  
  
_It’s not because RK900 looks too human like this._  
  
_It’s **not.**_  
  
[---]  
  
Gavin laid in bed and stared at the ceiling.  
  
It was almost dinner-time; moment of truth.  
  
“We gotta talk later,” He said to RK900 when he’d finally come back inside.  
  
RK900 stared at him blankly. “About?”  
  
Gavin shook his head. “At dinner. I gotta think first.” He’d hobbled into his room without looking back. Getting up and down the stairs had hurt his knee and hip something fierce. His arm and ribs weren’t so bad anymore, but he couldn’t avoid using his legs and the ache persisted in them. As it was, he had made some progress: The physical pain was lesser now.  
  
The mental pain, not so much.  
  
This- _thing_ with RK900 wasn’t helping.  
  
He sighed and shut his eyes. Forty-five minutes was enough for a nap, right? He could doze for a little bit, then wake-up and face the music. He was going to have to find some sort of tactful way to talk about this shit with RK900 because…  
  
…Because.  
  
Gavin was too tired to find a face-saving reason for addressing this. He just needed to stop this fucking android from killing himself. And he needed to do it by… _Not_ being an asshole, and not prodding at RK900 the way he usually would. This wasn’t to get under his skin; this was, conceivably, to help him.  
  
He drifted off into a mild, dreamless sleep.  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
Some time later Gavin jerked awake, confused. Something had woken him, but what was it?  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
Gavin jumped, wincing as his hip burned from the motion of it. Carefully he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, pushing himself up and limping towards the door.  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
Jesus, it was loud! It was like someone was just taking a bat to the wall. He could feel the reverberation of it through the floor, through the door as he wrenched the knob.  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
Gavin stepped into the living area, and found the source of the sound immediately.  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
RK900 was kneeling against the opposite wall of the living room, and he was- Jesus Christ. He had both hands braced against the wall, and he was _bashing his skull against it._ He was just slamming his head against the wall.  
  
**_WHACK.  
  
WHACK._**  
  
**_WHACK._**  
  
“Whoa, whoa, _whoa!_ _What the fuck are you doing?!_ ” Gavin barked, rushing forward and grabbing RK900 by the shoulder. The android didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t even seem to notice him.  
  
So Gavin, in a moment of panic, put himself between RK900 and the wall.  
  
He cringed, waiting for the impact of android-skull on his too-recently broken ribs, but it didn’t come: RK900 apparently had enough presence of mind to halt his movements before he could hurt Gavin. The android’s arms shook; blue blood was pumping from a wound on his head, sliding down his face. It brought Gavin back to that fucking _room_ when there had been blood pouring from RK900’s mouth and nose, and he had to dig his fingers into his bad hip, had to _hurt_ himself to keep his focus.  
  
…Oh, shit, was that what RK900 was doing? Suppressing the memories through self-harm?  
  
How… _Human_ of him.  
  
Gavin slid down, bracketed between RK900’s arms. He pushed at them, and they dropped to RK900’s lap. “Oh my God, what the fuck, what the fuck are you even doing- RK, look at me!”  
  
RK900 didn’t look. His eyelids fluttered, and he did exactly what Gavin had done when Hank had freed him from that chair: He tipped forward and collapsed against Gavin’s chest. He wasn’t quite deadweight, but he was close enough. Gavin wasn’t an expert on androids, but this seemed like something that needed immediate medical attention. He reached awkwardly down into his jeans and fished his phone out of the pocket.  
  
“Shit, shit, what do I- 911? Fuck, let’s give it a whirl.” He dialed and waited.  
  
“ _911, what is your emergency?_ ”  
  
“I need an ambulance, or a car, or whatever the fuck you send out- my-” _fuck, fuck, really?_ “-my friend- he’s an android- I don’t know, I think he just tried to bash his own skull in.”  
  
“ _Is he conscious?_ ”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
“ _We’ll send an ambulance to your location, sir._ ”  
  
[---]  
  
_He can’t talk anymore._  
  
_Ugly Motherfucker ripped out one of his molars, probably in retaliation for refusing to kill RK900, and Gavin’s so consumed with pain that he just… Can’t. He can’t. He can’t **anything.**_  
  
_Across from him, RK900 is motionless in his chair. Maybe he’s dead; maybe he’s powered-down to avoid burning any more energy than he has to. Ugly Motherfucker is gone, and there are two mooks standing in the room chattering away about the Detroit Lions and the Super Bowl and other shit Gavin just can’t be bothered to give a fuck about._  
  
_For a time, it’s almost like he’s asleep. Not properly asleep, but the kind of asleep where you’re still half aware of what’s going on around you. When he hears raised voices, it doesn’t register; when he feels someone plucking at his restraints, Gavin chases unconsciousness to avoid the pain for just a little while longer._  
  
**_BANG. BANG._**  
  
_It’s these sounds that stir Gavin to action: Gunshots would rouse a cop out of a fucking coma. That’s a sound that often means life and death for a cop._  
  
_The strap on his left wrist is gone._  
  
_Then his left ankle._  
  
_Right ankle._  
  
_Right wrist._  
  
_Gavin tips forward in the chair and lands against something, some **one** solid._  
  
_He finds he recognizes the smell._  
  
_Gavin recognizes it from years of smelling it every time he walked past Hank Anderson’s desk: Stale cigarette smoke and liquor and cheap cologne. Before, Gavin would wrinkle his nose and recommend a better cologne than eau d’alcoholic and walk off chortling; before, he’d grunt an insult over the fact that by sheer reputation and superiority an old drunk like Hank got to keep his job._  
  
_Right now, it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever smelled in his goddamn life._  
  
[---]  
  
It took four hours for someone to come out and talk to Gavin.  
  
Gavin waited patiently, dozing in the chair in the waiting room. The android hospital- ‘Blue City Hospital’, they were calling it now- seemed reasonably quiet (at least compared to the last time he was here, during the whole virus fiasco), perhaps because androids were less inclined to bashing themselves up than humans were? Fuck if Gavin knew. It was quiet and he was capable of sleeping, so he did.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
Gavin snorted, jerked away. “Huh?”  
  
An android technician was looking at him calmly. “Were you here with RK900?”  
  
“Uh, yeah- yeah, he alright?”  
  
The android nodded. “We’ve repaired his head, and we intend to have another technician come in to examine his software- but he is stable and responsive now. Would you like to see him?”  
  
Gavin slowly rose to his feet. “Yeah, why not?”  
  
If the technician thought that response was odd, she gave no sign.  
  
RK900 was in a bed, not unlike one in an emergency room. The technicians had repaired his head just fine and save for a faint, jagged line, there was no indicator that he’d ever bashed it open in the first place. The expression on his face was impassive as Gavin approached. “Hello, Detective Reed.”  
  
“Hello, Guy Who Tried to Bash His Skull in Against My Living Room Wall, how’s kicks?”  
  
RK900’s expression remained serene. “I apologize. I believe I was suffering an undiagnosed malfunction.”  
  
“Yeah, humans get those too: It’s called PTSD and you should see a shrink.”  
  
“Androids do not get-”  
  
“ _Don’t_.” Gavin held up a hand. “Don’t. Don’t feed me the ‘I’m an android and therefore invulnerable’ shit.”  
  
RK900’s expression flickered.  
  
“Just- God, _talk_ to someone, alright? They have android shrinks, don’t they? Talk to them honestly about the fact that you’re willing to bash your head in rather than admit that you feel things. Repress too much and you’ll either end up exploding, or worse- you’ll get to be a top-tier asshole like me.”  
  
RK900 continued to stare at him. “Detective Reed, I’m not-”  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” Gavin snapped. “Stop. Don’t do the ‘I don’t feel things’ thing anymore. Fuck, even _I_ don’t think I buy it anymore. I don’t want to hear it ever again from you. I don’t want you bashing your skull in again. Got it?”  
  
RK900 was quiet. “Got it,” He said finally, voice calm but with an edge of _something_ there that suggested discomfort. “But I don’t believe it.”  
  
“I know you don’t,” Gavin said wearily. “They’re sending someone else in to look at you. Just let me know when you’re ready to go.”  
  
RK900 stared at him.  
  
“Go where?”  
  
“To the nearest trash-compactor- _Home_ , moron.”  
  
RK900 seemed taken aback. “You want me to come back with you, after what I did?”  
  
Gavin threw his hands up. “What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment. Come and find me when they’re done with you.”  
  
He left the room; a female android, discreetly standing a few yards down the hall, entered once he’d stepped away. Gavin had never paid much attention to androids, but this model he recognized: A KL900, the kind used for social-work and psychology. They ran into them on domestic cases sometimes, particularly the ones that involved abused kids. And assuming this one served that same purpose… She was probably going to go evaluate RK900 to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt himself again.  
_  
Good_ , Gavin thought, bitter and exasperated.  
  
He’d never admit it out loud, but he didn’t want the bastard to die.  
  
(And it’s not because he’s seen the human in him.  
  
It’s _not._ )  
  
-End


End file.
